Losing the War

I read about war. It’s always been an interest; now it also counts as professional development.

I recommend Losing the War by Lee Sandlin to anyone who shares an interest in armed conflict.

I disagree with one aspect of his work: he believes that Japan would have surrendered within weeks even without the use of atomic bombing, despite going on elsewhere in the paper about the abundance of overoptimism on the part of every planner in World War II. All of them believed that their enemy was continually on the verge of surrender. He doesn’t see that his abhorrence at the US use of nuclear weapons might be the same sort of willful denial of reality.

1 Comment

Wow. Just wow. I’ve been thinking about that article for the past 2 1/2 hours or so (approximately the past three 50-minute periods). The article made a huge impression on me. A lot of my thoughts boil down to the same old “war is hell” cliched lines that Sandlin apparently dislikes. I’m trying to distill my thoughts into something more than that; check my blog in a little while to see my as-yet-unwritten longer response.